Bird Life in December. 



In spite of short, dark days, it is impossible to take 

 seriously December's claim to be a winter month. 

 "Old-fashioned winters," if they ever existed, waned 

 with the stage-coach and went out finally with Dickens. 

 For every Christmas upon which frost and snow bestow 

 their traditional benison a dozen are celebrated to the 

 accompaniment of drizzle and mud. Your modern 

 December is, in fact as by the calendar, but a con- 

 tinuation of autumn ; winter but toys playfully with 

 the nut-brown damsel ; if snow and ice appear it is 

 but for short rehearsals, any serious call upon these 

 scenic effects being reserved for the new year. So 

 well is this recognised that those who are curious in 

 meteorological matters point here and there to a 

 Christmas Day, which was actually warmer than the 

 following twenty-fifth of May, while no jury of youthful 

 Britons would acquit the month of a peculiar aptitude 

 for raising hopes of hyperborean sport only to be dissi- 

 pated as soon as skates appear and the first snowball 

 is thrown. In an average December flowers of a 

 dozen kinds, — monthly roses, stocks, chrysanthemums, 

 linger on in the cottage gardens. The small bat or 



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